Kaczyński, in common with many other conservative politicians in Central Europe, believes the burden of dealing with the migrant crisis should fall on those countries which encouraged the influx, such as Germany, rather than those who opposed it.

“We didn’t exploit the countries where the refugees are arriving from, we didn’t use their labour force and finally, we aren’t calling them to Europe,” he explained.

“As I said in 2015 on refugees, we are ready to take part in the EU programme for refugees; we just don’t want to have problems to which we didn’t contribute. We have a full moral right to say ‘No’.”

He added, “There is no reason for us to radically lower our living standards and the quality of life in Poland” to meet the EU’s demands.

Macron promises to punish Poland for not accepting multiculturalism if he's elected President https://t.co/XQzpel57oi

French president Emmanuel Macron, who was hostile to Poland even before his election, has accused the Visegrád group of countries resisting the quotas of “betrayal“, accusing them of them of taking all of the benefits of EU membership without wanting to bear the ‘costs’.

“Europe isn’t a supermarket. Europe is a common destiny,” he told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. “The countries in Europe that don’t respect the rules should have to face the political consequences.”

But Kaczyński has hit back at the former Rothschild banker and Socialist Party economy minister, pointing out that businesses in Western European countries “also benefit” from EU funding, with “[Western European] enterprises located in Poland transferring tens of billions of złotys every year without paying any taxes”.

He added that it was “important to remind … our critics in the West that Poland was the first country that had to stand up to [Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union],” and suffered “gigantic damage from which it has not recovered” as a result.